New high school coming to Maltby is looking for a name

MALTBY — A new Snohomish County high school is in the works and it’s going to need a name.

The Maltby-based campus is scheduled to open in the fall of 2017, but it will have a name long before that.

The Northshore School District has narrowed the list of candidates to eight. An online survey through Sept. 5 will help trim that number.

The contenders are Canyon Ridge, Duwamish, Greenview, North Creek, North View, Northbrook, Pacific Crest and Tambark high schools.

All were offered up by people living in the community. The initial list had more than 100 recommendations.

“Our community has been very thoughtful in suggesting names,” said Leanna Albrecht, a school district spokeswoman.

Explanations for each suggestion are available on the school district’s website: www.nsd.org.

Many have historical or geographic relevance.

Tambark, for instance, refers to a creek about a mile from the new high school. Some older neighborhoods in the area have Tambark in their name.

North Creek pays tribute to the region’s watershed, a forest and a pioneering school district in the area that opened with a one-room schoolhouse in the 1880s.

Northshore, a district of roughly 20,000 students, now has three large high schools.

When the school opens in Maltby, the district will change the format for its high schools to include grades nine through 12. Northshore is one of two large districts left in the state that still has the 10 through 12th grade high-school system.

A task force that studied the grade system changes will be asked to review the survey results for the new school’s name. It will rank the top three suggestions. The school board is expected to name the new campus in October, Albrecht said.

The new $130 million school is expected to have an enrollment of 1,500 to 1,600 students. The district will be redrawing attendance boundaries between now and when it opens.